Sunday, February 23, 2014

No such thing as porn addiction?

“Transgression as Addiction: Religiosity and Moral Disapproval as Predictors of Perceived Addiction to Pornography,” published February 12, 2014 by Archives of Sexual Behavior, concludes essentially that people diagnose themselves as addicted to porn and suffer from the belief that they are addicted, even when they are not, because their churches so pathologize porn consumption.

As the report puts it:

“religiosity and moral disapproval of pornography use were robust predictors of perceived addiction to Internet pornography while being unrelated to actual levels of use among pornography consumers.”

Joshua Grubbs, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Case Western University, “became interested in the topic after observing fellow students in distress because they thought something was terribly wrong with them after watching online pornography.”

Another study, “The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model,” which appears this month in Current Sexual Health Reports, suggests that there is no such thing as porn addiction—despite “a large, lucrative industry [that] has promised treatments for pornography addiction.” It also “found very little evidence – if any at all — to support some of the purported negative side effects of porn ‘addiction.’”

Get that? The reason people self-identify as porn addicts is because religion makes them feel so bad about getting aroused by pornography that they think there must be something wrong with them - even when they don't actually watch a lot of pornography and it doesn't cause them any problems.

But this is very typical of religion, isn't it? Religions tend to hold people to unrealistic standards of behavior, especially when it comes to sex - premarital sex, masturbation, homosexuality, pornography, etc. So when their members violate those standards - as they all do - they feel guilty. They feel like they've sinned, so they think they need the church even more.

It's a nice racket for the church, manufacturing guilt over things that no one should feel guilty about, just to wrap the chains a little tighter. But it just one of the techniques religion has used so successfully to dominate human societies worldwide.

___
PS. If you think that's bad, check out this article about sexual assault at a Christian college. A few excerpts:

When Claire Spear arrived at Patrick Henry as a freshman in 2009, she, like all new PHC students, affirmed a statement of faith saying the devil is real, the Bible is without error, and “Jesus Christ literally will come to earth again in the Second Advent.” It was a great comfort to both Claire and her parents knowing PHC was a bubble unto its own: On campus, only good, moral Christians would be found—their kind of people, people they could trust.

“I figured nothing bad could happen to me,” Claire says. ...

[Michael] Farris [the founder of Patrick Henry College] has said a main drive behind the founding of PHC was the demand from homeschooling parents for a college that promoted courtship culture, in which male students ask female students’ fathers for permission to “court” with marriage in mind. About 85 percent of PHC students have been homeschooled, and all students pledge to “reserve sexual activity for marriage, shun sexually explicit material, and seek parental counsel when pursuing a romantic relationship,” according to the PHC student handbook. ...

The self-policing that courtship culture requires, however, is not egalitarian. Responsibility falls disproportionately to women, who are taught to protect their “purity” and to never “tempt” their brothers in Christ to “stumble” with immodest behavior. “The lack of men’s responsibility or culpability for their own actions and the acceptance of male ‘urges’ as irresistible forces of nature is the understructure of Christian modesty movements and their secular counterpart,” the journalist Kathryn Joyce wrote in Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. These movements, she noted, see “women’s bodies as almost supernaturally perverse and corrupting.” ...

Last September, the school chose Dr. Stephen Baskerville, a professor of government, to deliver a speech that the entire student body was required to attend. He argued that feminism and liberalism have transformed the government into “a matriarchal leviathan.” The result, he said, according to a copy of the speech, was a society plagued by politically motivated “witch hunts” against men—while “the seductress who lures men into a ‘honeytrap’ ” was really to blame. “Recreational sex in the evening turns into accusations of ‘rape’ in the morning, even when it was entirely consensual,” Baskerville explained. “This is especially rampant on college campuses.” ...

Researchers estimate that one in five American women is sexually assaulted in college, and Patrick Henry College’s unique campus culture has not insulated the school from sexual violence. In fact, it puts female students, like Claire Spear, in a particular bind: How do you report sexual assault at a place where authorities seem skeptical that such a thing even exists?

Yeah, it's that kind of article. It's pretty sad. And then there's this:

With just more than 320 current students and 590 graduates to date, Patrick Henry is a tiny school with an outsized influence as a training ground for the religious right and a pipeline to conservative jobs in Washington. The Bush-era White House had about as many interns from PHC as Georgetown, the journalist Hanna Rosin wrote in her 2007 book, God’s Harvard. Students in the school’s Strategic Intelligence Program can graduate with security clearances from their summer internships, making PHC a feeder school for the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, various branches of the military, and intelligence contractors.

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Bill Garthright

I'm a skeptic. I think it makes sense to have reasons for what I believe, so I apportion my belief to the evidence. You're welcome to disagree. Please, tell me I'm wrong. I probably don't agree with anyone about everything. Why should disagreement be a problem? Check the Pages section below for series posts and links to book reviews and game posts, as well as contact info. I have varied interests, so there's a little bit of everything here. I encourage you to look around. - Bill

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